O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

Envy is the basis of democracy.

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.